Does the ending of a book matter to you?

A great ending can save a mediocre novel while a bad ending can ruin a good one, in my opinion.

A good ending is important but that doesn't mean it has to be a happy ending or really an ending, I love cliff hangers. The ending of Voltaires Candide is really really good.

I think the ending matters because it is the final impression which is left upon me. I can still say whether I enjoyed most of the book, however it will be followed by a 'but'. It's like watching a drama series that is suspenseful all the way through only to find the ending is rushed and anti-climatic. Sure the story was great and so was the acting but one feels short changed and that is what I will remember most.

A Farewell To Arms in one of my favourite novels but that ending completely bums me out. It's not that I don't like it but it is such a downer on such a fun story.

Id also depends on what kind of reader you are...
Speaking for myself, in general, I am one of those persons to whom the journey matters even more than its destination...
Speaking of novels, though, there exist different types of endings... Some endings do really describe the way things come to an end, some others are just the final assertion of something that we've already understood through "the journey"...
When I was in college and used to translate greek "mythoi", there was a typical ending which was "kai ho mythos deloi oti..." which in English means "and the tale demonstrates that..." followed by the final declaration which describes what point the author was trying to make with the whole story.

Yes some times i feel like why the authors ending the story so fast.

Because reading a book requires such a commitment of time when compared to other media, ie films, one wants to be rewarded for that commitment with a worthwhile ending. Of course, when a book is so good that you don't want it to end, then sometimes its conclusion cannot help but be disappointing (take Don Quixote for example whose fantastic ending grieved me because I never wanted to reach it).

When a book is part of a series, then the ending becomes even more important, because it has to conlude its part of the story while leaving enough for the reader to want the next installment, something Proust was an expert at.

Though less important than the beginning, at least from the author's point of view, a decent ending, which as has already been pointed out is the last thing one remembers about a book, can be the thing that makes an author's career, provided they can write more of them.

The End.

I think the ending matters a lot. There are many great books that have mediocre or disappointing endings, but I see that as a flaw in an otherwise great book. A bad ending hurts a book; not enough to ruin it, but it does lessen its greatness.

I agree a bad ending is a big deal. My thoughts come from a video game called MASS EFFECT. The first two especially the second were deeply moving. Like a novel, you grow to love these characters; you are emotionally involved. If at the very end, the ending of the story is bad, it hurts. It not only hurts in itself, it poisons all the feelings you had from before. I have heard it said, like the original ending of the movie Dodge Ball, that it was artsy and a clever change to have a bad ending that makes you leave angry and upset. I believe the story teller is a sacred profession. A story teller should never forget the audience. Making me love your book then snatching it away at the ending is simply cruel. A book with a bad ending is like a joke with a bad punchline. Something was seriously wrong.

I think we must remember that a great novel... or narrative of any form... does not always come to its climax in the very last paragraph. Shakespeare often does so. Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities does as does Homer's Odyssey and as MM pointed out, McCarthy's Blood Meridian comes to such a climax. But we might recognize that just as a grand symphony need not always come to a great crashing climax in the final moments, so it is the same of a narrative. In some books the climax has been reached... followed by moments of of reflection... or perhaps a quiet return to things as they were. I am hard-pressed to think of a truly horrible ending... at least not in any book I found worth reading to start with... although I'm certain that such exist.

Sadly, I think the fame of a dead man's deeds can die. Imagine a long road of statues. Each statue was a great person, a true hero. In their time, they were so loved, so important. Now imagine you lived in that past and knew some of those people. Later you walk the road. You know each statue is important. At the ones of people you knew and loved, you stop to cry; you drink to their name. For those you did not know, you of all people understand they were great and their memory sacred, but you also know, it is not the same. You did not know them. As much as you want to love those champions of life that you never met, you can't. I think the best we can do is try, to pause and give honors to forgotten heroes. If you were not there, the true meaning can never be felt.

Honestly, the ending hardly matters to me anymore. To me, they neither rescue a poor novel nor ruin a good one. I'm much more affected by the previous 90 percent. The beginnings are another matter, as I have a bad habit of being finicky at the outset. The good thing is that if it's well written it will tend to "call" me back. That happened a lot with Borges, Joyce, Proust, Baudelaire, and Calvino for me. Now they're some of my favorite works.